Author's Note:
Hey, Team SIMH! This chapter (along with the next two chapters) is a glimpse of the draft that I created (and discarded afterwards) when I first finished writing the ending for Someone's In My Head. The beginning of CHAPTER 29 might be similar to the actual version, but the whole idea is drastically different, so read on!
As you read through the following parts you'll realize the reason why I discarded these chapters -- the impracticality and the impossibility of this alternative ending were so high that it seemed almost comical. So, to entertain you guys, I decided to post them (three BONUS chapters)! Don't judge, just enjoy laughing! xD
#teamSIMH
Truth be told, the tracking process didn't take long. Like, at all. It only took a mere five minutes for us to find our first target-Tanya.
Well, technically, the Oculus found her in two minutes. The other three were used to quench Lenny's insatiable inquisitiveness. In simpler terms? His curiosity.
"This baby could tell us where Mr. O is right now!" Lenny protested when we tried to stop him from stalking the President of the United States. "It could give us his phone number, along with the numbers of each and every celebrity in the world. C'mon guys, just give me five minutes and I'll have Ellen on the phone for you."
"Phil?" I sighed. "Get this bastard out of my way."
"Gladly."
Once Phil got Lenny to shut up, I entered Tanya's full name (the Oculus automatically retrieved her picture from her ID), a search radius of 600 miles, and an 8-hour timeframe. Two minutes later, we were staring at a pretty straightforward route. It was a zigzag pattern that connected the motel with the CIA safe house.
"Try narrowing down the time frame to the last hour," Phil suggested. "If there are cameras in this place, the ones in the room where Tanya's being held should've caught an image of her."
"I thought you were the one who said that there weren't any hidden cameras in here." I pointed out.
"Just do it."
I did as he asked.
As you would have thought, nothing showed up. No images, no video clips, nothing. It was like Tanya had mysteriously vanished from the surface of Earth. Which, theoretically speaking, was true.
"Try the past two hours," Phil said, his voice strained. I had heard doctors in the Emergency Room say "Charge him up to 200, please" in that tone of voice.
I placed a gentle hand on Phil's shoulder. "Phil, maybe she might not be-"
"Just change the fucking timeframe, will ya?" Phil's voice was deathly calm.
This time, we got something. It was a series of pictures, followed by a video recording of Tanya sitting on a chair inside a white room that looked similar to the one that I was in half an hour ago. Judging by her lolled head and lack of motion, I would say that she was indeed, as Phil had predicted earlier, in a drug-induced sleep.
"Which room is that?" Phil muttered as I scanned my eyes along the subtitle for the video clip.
"Room 7," I announced. With a flick of my fingers, I brought up the map of this building. It took me no time to spot the words 'Room 7'. "It's just two doors down from here."
"Then what are you waiting for?" Phil cried urgently. "Let's go!"
"Wait. We still have to find Royce, remember?" I reminded Phil, my fingers busy typing in the necessary parameters for the Oculus to perform the search. Comically enough, I was stumped at the first question.
"Anybody got Royce's first name?" I asked, mentally-reprimanding myself for being so ignorant when we were having tea in Royce's office earlier. Oh, Jarod, you fool. "No?"
"Spencer." Lenny offered. "Spencer Royce."
I took a full minute to stare at Lenny like he was Jesus.
"Eidetic memory." Lenny shrugged, pointing at his head. "Can't help it."
"Thank you," I said, and I really meant it. I punched in the last of the information and hit 'SEARCH'.
The search results were almost similar to Tanya's. There were images of Royce within the premises two hours ago, but none in the previous hour. Dang it. It must be either he'd really went off the grid, or...
...he'd worn a mask.
But then that didn't make sense either. I'd found a Guy Fawkes mask in Royce's drawer, hadn't I? But again, he could have a spare...
Hastily, I changed the parameters to fit the description of The Duke. As I hit the 'SEARCH' button once more, I prayed for the Oculus to work its magic. Find me The Duke, please, find me...
Bling, bling. The familiar red bracketed wordings appeared on the bluish screen of the Oculus.
[NO RESULTS FOUND]
My shoulders slumped. I've lost him. He's gone.
My mind was a blur as I tried to figure out how Royce could've pulled this off. To disappear completely from the grid? He must be wearing a burlap sack over his head to do that.
Through the fog of confusion inside my head, I faintly heard Phil shouting, "We gotta go, now!" I made no move. I was too busy thinking how I was supposed to escape prison, now when The Duke has vanished. Horrifying thoughts of being a fugitive on the run for the rest of my life buzzed across my mind's eye.
Just before I started ripping my hair out, Phil, who'd apparently lost his patience, seized control of my legs and started marching towards the vault door.
"What is this, a mutiny or something?" I yelped, grappling for the controls of my legs. Phil knocked me aside with a Mayweather punch.
"I'm sorry, man. I truly am. But I just couldn't stand there and let my wife die while you waste precious time chasing a ghost." Phil said.
"What do you mean? She's not gonna die!" I shot back. "And The Duke is not a ghost; you know that! Now gimme back my legs."
Phil ignored me from that point on.
On hindsight, I must say that for a guy who was having all four of his limbs hijacked and toyed around like a possessed puppet, I was behaving remarkably well. In the end, I even relented and allowed Phil to trundle off to Room 7 where his wife was being held.
We reached Room 7 in no time. However, the moment I saw the familiar SpongeBob's-pineapple-house-metal-door, I knew something was terribly wrong. Three seconds later, it hit me.
There was nobody guarding the room.
"Wait," I told Phil. "Where are the guards?"
He shrugged. "Toilet break?"
The gears in my mind whirred. Something peculiar was going on here. Tanya might not be a threat physically, but she is the only reason Phil and I are still here in this godforsaken place. Being a calculating criminal mastermind, surely Royce should know that if he lost Tanya, he would've lost his only trump card on Phil. So why would Royce be so negligent in guarding her?
Unless it's a trap. A tiny voice inside me whispered.
"Stop!" I blurted out, but it was too late. Phil had already opened the door. I shut my eyes and curled into a ball, bracing for the imminent ambush.
"Dude," Phil said. I opened my eyes. I figured that since Phil was still able to talk, he's probably still alive, and so was I.
Here's the good news.
Nobody came forward to tackle me like I was the quarterback. Nothing came whizzing at my head, chopping it off before I can say Jack Robinson. No giant bonfire erupted at the threshold where I was standing.
In fact, there was nothing at all. The room was empty. No guards, no chair, and yeah, as you might've guessed, no Tanya.
And there's the bad news.
"No, no, NO!" Phil bellowed. "Where is she?!"
Lenny and I had no answer to that, so we kept our mouths shut. But I had a feeling that I knew why there weren't any images for Tanya in the past hour. Royce must've had her moved elsewhere an hour ago.
The whole 'blank stare' strategy didn't work out very well for me, as two seconds later, Phil whirled around and started shouting at me. "You sure this is Room 7? Could you have...I don't know, misinterpreted the map? Maybe what you saw was Room 1, but you thought, 'Oh, the '7' has such a short head, but who cares?'"
I held my hands up in defense. "No, I'm absolutely sure―"
"Then why the fuck isn't my wife here?!" Phil exploded.
"Look, man―" Sensing the situation was about to get ugly, Lenny the Peacekeeper decided that it was time for damage control, but he'd barely uttered two words when a robotized voice boomed from the walls.
"Jarod, Jarod, Jarod." The voice chanted. "You are, indeed, resourceful as ever. I must say that you surpassed my expectations. Breaking into the vault―that's totally incredible, I must say."
Seeing me stagger around clumsily in search of the source of the voice, it spoke again. "Oh, in case you were wondering, these walls are equipped with nano-mikes, nano-speakers and nano-cameras, each one of them too small for the naked eye to spot. However, if used in large quantities, they serve the same purpose as their normal-sized counterparts."
I wanted to remind Phil of his oh-so-brilliant deduction about the absence of hidden cameras in this place, but decided this wasn't the right time.
"What do you want?" Phil cried, his voice close to breaking. "Where is Tanya?"
"The lady? She's safe." The voice replied dismissively. "The real question is the first one. But I believe I've given you the answer already."
I ripped back mouth control from Phil before he could start cursing out loud. "Don't do this, Royce. You said you needed me to complete Operation Athena, right? So leave Tanya out of this. That woman had suffered enough."
Royce scoffed. "Oh, I assure you that she is, in no way possible, suffering right now. I give you my word on that."
Phil gasped. "What have you done to her?"
I relayed the question.
"Don't worry; she's alive and well, just...y'know, dreaming away." Through the mini-speakers, I could almost feel Royce's smile. It felt uber-creepy. "But she won't be for long. Not if you do something."
"Do what?"
"This." He said.
Right on cue, the floor beneath me caved in. Caught unawares, I shrieked in a very unmanly fashion as I tumbled into the bottomless abyss beneath, its darkness striking fear into my heart...
Nah, not really.
What actually happened was I fell for about 2 seconds into something soft, so yeah, no broken bones or a shredded spleen. But the shrieking part was true though. I screeched like I had a beetle up in each of my orifices.
When I finally came to my senses and stopped my girlish screaming, I realized I was lying on a bed in a brightly-lit room. It was fully air-conditioned, and the walls were pristine white. There was a―
Wait a second. I was back in Room 7.
My mind struggled to process the news. So I fell from Room 7, and I ended up back in Room 7. Or was it Room 5? For the record, the two of them looked completely identical.
Golly. This shit was even more complicated than Alice's rabbit hole. At least that led to Wonderland.
"Welcome back." Royce's voice floated into my ears. My senses were kinda numb and dull, like I'd just recovered from a serious hangover.
It must be due to the falling. I thought.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Royce. He hadn't changed much (well, how could he have, it's not like I've not seen him in decades or anything), but he was wearing thick gloves and a pair of huge goggles. Oh, and a lab coat. He's what, a scientist now?
I tried to move my hands and legs, but they were strapped to the bed underneath me with what I supposed were FlexiCuffs.I tried to speak, but my throat felt so bitter that I had the urge to gag. At the end, I settled for licking at my (parched) lips. And some really loud throat-clearing.
Royce placed a hand on my shoulder kindly. If I can move I would've torn that hand off. "Take your time. Don't worry, it's normal to have difficulties speaking at first."
When I finally got my voice back, I croaked out. "W...where is Tanya?"
"Always the selfless one, eh?" Royce replied approvingly. "Don't worry, she's fine―she's just in the next room."
I thought for a while, my eyes flickering around as I drank in my surroundings. "Am I dreaming?"
Royce chuckled. "No. But you were."
"Oh."
It took me a moment to fully compute what Royce had just said. "Wait, what do you mean 'I was'?"
"You were in a simulation, Jarod. For about an hour."
My mind was racing now. If everything in the past hour was just a dream, then could it be possible that Layla was...still alive? No! That didn't make any sense. When did I fall asleep? How did I even enter the simulation in the first place?
"So Layla is still alive?"
"Of course she's alive!" Royce looked horrified. "How on Earth could I've killed my loyal assistant? I assure you that she's totally fine, but if you need somebody to blame, blame the simulation, as it was left to operate and develop the plot on its own; all I could do was to spectate the whole thing through this EEG right here. I swear, if I could interfere, I wouldn't have had me shot Layla just like that."
I was still struggling to form coherent thoughts. "H...how...did I...?"
Royce grinned evilly. "Coffee or tea?"
Realization hit me in the face. The beverages! Royce must've added something in them. But still, the simulation must've been really smart to start off from the point where the beverages were served to make the whole thing seem so flawless and convincing.
"But, it all felt so...real."
"Surely it did; the tech is state-of-the-art." Royce agreed. "However, there were quite a few glitches in it; some of which that are blatantly illogical, while the others were just minor anomalies. For starters, there's no such thing as the Oculus; that technology is just too far-fetched for our era. The simulation made that up from your memories. It seems like you've watched the latest installment of Fast and Furious, eh?"
Ah. God's Eye. Right. I smacked myself (metaphorically, of course) for not making the connection earlier.
"You might also have noticed that there weren't any blood when Layla was shot in the head, and the time where Hector messed up the name of the car he lent you. Those are the smaller details that the simulation overlooked. The one last obviously irrational simulation is all the nano bullshit I was saying at the end. There might be nano-cameras around, but to make them invisible, I guess we might've to give Jack Griffin a ring."
"But why?" I rasped. "Why go through such elaborate means to create this so-called...simulation?"
Royce sighed. "Well, there are two objectives: besides serving as a final test for you and your fellow compatriots' capabilities, the simulation was also to make time for Layla as she underwent the Initiation.
The Initiation. The words struck a bell inside my head. But I was reminded of something more important. "Where are they?"
"Who?"
"Phil and Lenny? Are they gone?" I hate to admit it, but I actually felt a pang of unwillingness at that thought.
"Don't worry, they'll be back with you in just a moment," Royce assured me. "Thanks to the successful Initiation in Layla, their consciousness has just been manually triggered, so it might take a while before they reach the optimum point for the Interexchange. After all, they had been living inside a tube for the last fifteen years."
There's the word again, Initiation. Plus a whole lot of other unfamiliar terms that I had no idea what they meant. And what was Royce talking about? "Phil and Lenny are inside Layla too?" I gasped.
"Well, I believe you deserve all the credit for that." Royce shrugged humbly. "Thanks to you and Wong, we've managed to determine the ultimate trigger to activate both Phil and Lenny's consciousness together―mathematical challenges."
"Oh, so it was you who sent Wong to spy on me all along." I accused.
"At the college, yes, but in your house, Wong was sent only after Pikachu was destroyed."
"Pikachu?" I wondered what my now-shredded-into-a-hundred-million-pieces plaything could have anything to do with this.
"There was a camera and a sound recorder inside," Royce answered simply.
Damn. All those times I thought I was alone when I was surreptitiously increasing the shares of Kleenex by...never mind.
"But how did you know that Lenny was inside my head too? I pondered. "'Cause if I remember correctly, Lenny didn't exactly inform you that he was gonna kill himself."
"His PA was quite a helpful guy when I applied a little something on his pressure point."
"Wait, so you said Layla went through the Initiation too?" I asked. "Why did she even have to do that? It's not like she's got someone in her head―" I gasped when I saw Royce's expression. "―what have you done to her?"
Royce's smile was blinding, but it oozed facetiousness. "She's A-Okay, trust me. She's just the final piece of the puzzle I needed to start the ultimate trial."
"The...ultimate...trial?" I struggled to pronounce the words. "Why do you still need Layla when you've already got me?"
"You really don't know, do you?" Royce chuckled, then rolled his eyes. "Of course! It's not like I told anyone about it."
I stared at him coldly, willing for him to continue.
Royce sighed. "Right. What do you think is the real objective of Operation Athena?"
"To implant a dying person's consciousness into a healthy person's body in order to prolong the former's life?"
"Really? That's what you think this whole thing is about?"
I narrowed my eyes. "Just so you know, you're not going anywhere with this operation―it's a dead end."
Royce's eyebrows shot up. "And why is that so?"
"The age factor." I figured this was my only chance to convince him to stop this madness. "Once a person's consciousness leaves its original body, its deterioration rate increases fivefold. So, instead of living longer, he or she only gets to live a fifth of the supposed time remaining in their lives."
To my dismay, Royce didn't seem the least bit aghast at the news. Instead, he gave me a tight-lipped smile. "That might be a problem, but it doesn't change much of the equation. The operation is still a success."
"What? You mean Operation Athena is finished?"
"It should be complete―" Royce glanced at the watch on his wrist, then to the monitor beside me. "―just about now."
Without warning, Royce hit a button on the keyboard somewhere above my head, and a strong electric current started coursing through me. I arched my back reflexively, and shrieked like I was being electrocuted because, well, because I was being freaking electrocuted. There was a strong whooshing sound by my ear that got sharper and sharper, but that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was the light. Now you might be imagining something like the time when Jesus was lying in Mary's arms in the nativity scene at St Michael's. But there was nothing holy about this light. This light was hostile. And agonizingly blinding. I shut my eyes, but it didn't matter. My surroundings got whiter, and whiter, and whiter...
When I woke again, I was still in Room 5 (or Room 7), and Royce was gawking worryingly down at me, his head blocking the bright overhead lights. I was grateful for that. After all, 'light' has just got promoted to the top of my Phobias List.
"Jarod?" Royce called out uncertainly. My ears were still ringing from the hurricane assault just now. "Can you hear me?"
I nodded. My hair felt like they'd grown an inch.
Apparently, a simple nod-of-my-head was the reaction Royce was wanting, for the triumphant grin on his face was so wide I swear I could've fitted a floppy disk in it. "C...can you talk?" He stammered, barely concealing his excitement.
I tried clearing my throat. This time, I found my voice right away, but it came out funny. I sounded like a Demi Lovato having a sore throat. Alarmed, I scrambled up from the bed (thank God the FlexiCuffs were cut this time), and as I did so, I felt my chest weighing down unnaturally.
Something was very, very wrong here.
As I looked up, Royce was holding a mirror in his hands, smiling encouragingly. "Here you go. Take a look. You'll like it."
I glanced nervously into the mirror.
HOLY.
MOTHER.
OF.
JESUS.
CHRIST.
Those amazing blonde curls that I've always admired in college were now cascading loosely down the nape of my neck. My Adam's apple was gone. With a start, I realized why my chest felt like someone had decided to put two water balloons on it; there were two water balloons on it.
The next thing that hit me was my height: I had become visibly shorter, and beneath the surgery gown, my legs looked like they'd went through some serious hair removal procedure. They were slender and smooth. My skin was slightly tanned, but still paler than I remembered. Not to mention that my crotch region felt disturbingly spacious.
And...oh my God. My face. That certainly wasn't me―those high cheekbones, those pink and desirable lips, and those dark blue eyes...
In simpler words? I had turned into Layla.